Competence, according to Dictionary.com, is “the quality of being competent; adequacy; possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification, or capacity.”^[1]

Much of higher education is competency-based, whether or not that word is used explicitly.  Higher education is not only about learning information, but also about learning skills so that you can apply, manipulate, transfer, and generally work with that information.  Learning about statistics should enable you to think critically about statistical information presented in a news story as you evaluate its validity.  Learning about literature should enable you to apply insights into human motivation in order to deal with a co-worker empathetically.  Learning about nutrition should enable you to interpret food labels and determine whether prepared vegetables are more nutritious in canned, frozen, or freeze-dried form.  Consider something you learned in a college course, and then consider how you applied that learning in a different context. You’ll immediately understand the concept of competence, or skills that help you apply and transfer knowledge.

The ESC Undergraduate Area of Study Guidelines which identify knowledge and skills expected in degrees actually list competencies, as do the ESC Learning Goals.  Employers are also focusing increasingly on competencies because they help workers maintain relevance and productivity in the workplace.  In addition to want ads listing specific content knowledge, they increasingly list competencies such as the abilities to learn, work on teams, communicate, and persist—all of which are key to succeeding in today’s fast-changing landscape in which content knowledge can change rapidly.  The page on General Workforce Skills has a fuller discussion of general workforce competencies expected in the near-future workplace.

As part of educational planning, then, it’s important to consider the competencies that will enable you to succeed and complete the degree, competencies which are also transferable to work and life.  That’s why it’s called “educational” planning and not just “degree planning.” As you pursue your degree, you should be developing more awareness of the underlying competencies that education can foster, in order to planfully engage in your learning.

The third part of this text deals with competencies for school which, as you can see in the table below, are also competencies for work and life.